Google Drive and Google Play Music Updated, Offline Radio Caching and Mobile Device Management Added

A couple of updates rolled out today, one for Google Drive and another for Google Play Music. The Google Play Music update is quite substantial, bringing offline radio caching, mobile device management, and lots of bug fixes. Before the update, devices connected to your account were managed through the desktop interface, which was sometimes a pain if you are constantly switching between devices.

As for the offline radio caching, users can now store their favorite stations on their devices, without the need for a data connection. It’s perfect for anyone who is a member to a gym that is underground or just doesn’t want to rack up data usage on your bill. Whatever the case may be, it’s a welcomed feature.

As for Drive, the update doesn’t appear to have a changelog posted yet, but once it is, we shall update the post.

Happy updating!

v5.4.1409N

* Added the ability to pin radio stations. You’ll now be able to listen to your offline radio stations even when you don’t have any connection

* Added ‘Play next’ in the context menu

* Lots of shuffle and unshuffle fixes

* The queue understands and shows what you are playing from (playlist, album, etc)

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How do I delete these Google Music “instant mix” icons that get created whenever I tap the instant mix button, I can’t get rid of them.

mullerlt

How about better sorting options, drives me nuts that I can’t sort by release date. And is there a reason New Releases don’t show up in the “New Releases” feed until Weds and not Tues?

Tyson

Anyone have a copy of the Music APK, or a link?

ChuckDz3

One thing that bugs me on GPM is when you select an Artist to shuffle it shuffles all access from that artist rather than playing on the songs that are in my archive. They should have two options one shuffle artist from archive and shuffle artist from all access.

Agreed. Back when I used to use Slacker Premium the songs would take forever to load or would cut out about 30-90 seconds in and skip to the next song, didn’t matter if I was on cell or wifi. Also their widgets never worked, I bitched at their support about it after noticing it happening on three different devices running three different versions of Android. They said there were a few bugs open but then had closed them and the issue was fixed. It wasn’t so I dumped them after two years and went to Pandora One.

Brandon

Disagree. I’ve used Sirius (both the satellite radio and the app), Slacker Pro and Premium, Pandora One and GPMAA for good amounts of time (6 months to a year or two). GPMAA definitely takes the cake, it’s cheap, has tons of music, great options like downloading the music and it’s a Google product. I don’t even bother with local music anymore on my computer/phone since GPMAA makes it so easy to find the music you want,so easy that I don’t even pirate music anymore. You can’t beat $8/month for an unlimited amount of music at your disposal.

Kelly

By far the most exciting feature for me of the newest Google Play Music version is real shuffle. Previously, if you played a song anywhere in the middle of a playlist, GPM would play that song, shuffle only songs AFTER that song in the playlist, and then repeat the playlist unshuffled. GPM now properly shuffles an entire playlist like the webapp does. Super exciting. I’ve been annoyed by Android GPM’s behavior on this from day one.

Agreed! But it definitely has not been like this since launch. I believe when they added the queue system is when the shuffle got all screwed up. Early on, shuffle worked correctly. I’m very glad they fixed this! 🙂

Michael Morris

How is this not in the article? The ability to select one song you want from a playlist, but not know the next song is how most people want to listen to music playlists. They also fixed the bug where after the last song in playlist ended it would take you to the first song in the entire library.

Good_Ole_Pinocchio

How in the heck do I save a Radio station lol? (I never used it) I can play one but it doesn’t save in my “My Stations”

tu3218

Google, why can I make playlists for my custom made playlists but not for my auto-playlists(Recently Added or Thumbs Up??) Please allow this. I’m sure it’s something so simple but it’d be really nice for when I’m driving.

Unless Google takes away that stupid zoomed-in album art thing they did when they revamped the UI, I could care less about updates. That is the stupidest, dumbest, most useless UI “tweak” I have ever seen.

flosserelli

I use GPM to listen to music, not look at album covers. Different priorities, I guess…

The Narrator

Once upon a time, a hipster named armpit, came up with a new trend. Look at music albums while the music is playing, but don’t listen to the music.

LP @ThisisEther

Yea, some people like the music BUT ALSO want their UI to have decent and respectable looking album art. It’s very common for fans to get pissed because album art is unacceptable. I hate it. Especially when the album art is wrong or even nonexistent and we can’t add album art to it on mobile device. Because, after all, it is ART.

Sporttster

Totally agree, LA. It irritated me so much I went back to the version that allowed the art to move on screen. It looks completely ridiculous to have half a pic stuck on the thing and totally unprofessionally done. PowerAmp isn’t like this. It has a sharp looking user interface. Everytime I’ve shown Google Play to anyone prior to putting the moving art back on, the first thing they’d say would be ‘what’s that pic? Is it messed up??’, and I’ve have to explain Google doesn’t have a clue how to make a quality music player, and I’d show them how unintuitive it is. This app needs a crapload of work to even compare to PowerAmp. Heck, the audio bug is enough to tick me off, with varying volumes.

LP @ThisisEther

Yea power amp is almost perfect, I’ve been praying for a buyout of poweramp since this new play music came out

Raven

No, not a buyout, they would probably just ruin it. I would much rather see Google Music open their API so that Poweramp could stream your Google Music.

LP @ThisisEther

Even better

Brandon

Ehh it’s better than the album art panning back in forth, that was so annoying. Why couldn’t they just make it fit and stay static like every other music app?